Phase V constituencies: Women's health insurance remains key challenge

Progress on other development indicators including adolescent pregnancy

Constituencies from six states and two Union Territories going to vote in the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections on Monday are off the mark in meeting several sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Health insurance among women remains a key challenge for all 49 constituencies. More than half of these constituencies are off target on 20 of the 33 SDGs related to population, health, and socioeconomic well-being, according to a Business Standard analysis of the dataset from a study titled ‘Call for action: presenting constituency-level data on population, health, and socio-economic well-being related to 2030 Sustainable Development Goals for India’.

The study by authors S V Subramanian, Amar Patnaik, and Rockli Kim appeared in The Lancet in February this year. 

Following health insurance, 95.9 per cent of constituencies were off target in addressing the use of tobacco among men. A similar proportion of constituencies lag on health insurance among men. 

Concerning anemia among non-pregnant women and pregnant women, 95.9 per cent and 89.4 per cent are off target, respectively. Overall, 93.9 per cent of the constituencies are off the mark when it comes to containing anemia among women. 

 

Off target constituencies are those that haven’t met the SDG goals by 2021, and won’t achieve the same by 2030 due to minimal or negative change between 2016 and 2021.

On target, on the other hand, refers to those who have not met the goals but recorded an improvement between 2016 and 2021 leading them to achieve them by 2030. 

The proportion of women with health insurance in Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir was the lowest at 1.3 per cent, according to the analysis of the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey 2019-21 (NFHS-5) by the study compared to 0.2 per cent in the previous rounds (NFHS-4). 

Hooghly in West Bengal has the higher share of men using tobacco at 72.8 per cent compared to others. Lucknow has the lowest coverage of health insurance among men across the constituencies analysed.  

 

Certain other indicators, however, show progress.                                                         

Around 95.9 per cent have achieved goals on reining in adolescent pregnancy among 10 to 14-year-olds. The rest, however, are in the achieved – II category, which means they have achieved the goal by 2021. Due to the negative change between 2016 and 2021, they will miss the target by 2030 if the same trend continues. 

Relating to multidimensional poverty, 44.9 per cent of constituencies have achieved the target by 2021. Others (55.1 per cent) are on target.

 

Lucknow is the best-performing constituency in reducing adolescent pregnancy among 10-14 year olds, with a prevalence of 0.04 per cent in the population. Sitamarhi from Bihar leads in addressing tobacco use among women.

In Mumbai north-central, multidimensional poverty is the lowest at 0.2 per cent in NFHS-5.